


Burning Crosses

by blackat_t7t



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Hate Crimes, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3261581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackat_t7t/pseuds/blackat_t7t
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The sixties aren’t so long over that the burning of a cross-like structure on a front lawn doesn’t get an instinctive response from a young black man."</p><p>Hank-centric fic dealing with the wesenrein and racism. Covers the wesenrein arc from the end of Cry Luison through Tribunal. Vague spoilers for Tribunal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Crosses

The sixties aren’t so long over that the burning of a cross-like structure on a front lawn doesn’t get an instinctive response from a young black man. The first is fear bordering on dread, cold and stabbing straight to his core, entirely unlike the edge of fear that keeps him sharp in the field. The second is disbelief- it’s 2014, for God’s sake!- followed quickly by confusion because this is not his home, the burning _thing_ isn’t for him, and he has no idea who it is for. Finally comes anger, righteous fury that _any_ one would burn _any_ thing that even remotely resembles a cross on someone’s lawn, much less his friends’ lawn, even if he doesn’t understand why they’d do it.

Cop instincts kick in, riding hard on the heels of that fury, and Hank is out the door just behind Nick, weapon drawn and looking around for the people responsible. He thinks he might hear someone laughing, but it quickly fades away beneath the crackling rush of the flames. The street is dark and silent outside of the circle of firelight on Monroe’s front lawn, and whoever torched the thing is gone.

Hank looks back at the burning structure. He can see it more clearly now and it’s no cross, but from the look of horror on Rosalee’s face and the way Monroe holds her protectively against his side he can guess it holds the same kind of threat.

“What is it?” Nick asks, circling the blaze.

“A wolfsangel,” Monroe says. “It’s wesen.” There’s confusion and disbelief in his voice, fear quickly morphing into anger on his face. Hank recognizes the same barrage of emotions he’d felt upon first seeing the thing, and suddenly he’s furious all over again.

“Why?”

Rosalee wraps her arms around herself like she’s fighting off a chill and leans into Monroe, her eyes darting through the shadows past the flames in search of some unseen threat. When she speaks her voice is filled with a bitter anger and a sharp edge of fear. “It’s because we got married.”

Hank follows her gaze to the street, and for all it looks empty he knows that the people responsible may well be watching them from the shadows and enjoying their reaction. “You’d better get back inside.” Monroe nods and hurries Rosalee through the door, his arm still around her shoulders.

Hank turns to Nick. “I’ll check the back,” he says, and his partner nods distractedly, still looking out at the street. From the steely glint in Nick’s eyes Hank knows he’s taking the threat seriously, but he doubts Nick can fully appreciate what Monroe and Rosalee are feeling- or what Hank’s feeling. After all, no one ever burned a cross on a white Grimm’s front lawn.

Hank circles the building, taking the time to catch his breath and push the emotions raging through him back enough that he can think more clearly. Once he’s sure there’s no immediate threat around them Hank turns the hose on the burning wolfsangel, and when it’s out he kicks it down with a dark satisfaction. Nick and Juliette are whispering in grave tones when he turns to them and asks Nick what he wants to do. Hank’s blood is up and he’d like to track down whoever’s responsible and toss them in a cell for the night, but he knows Nick is right when he says they should talk to Monroe first.

So they go inside, where the man in question is pacing and raging at whoever is responsible, his eyes an unnatural red that even Hank can see,  while Rosalee stands with her arms crossed defensively over her chest. As Rosalee explains about the _Secundum Naturae Ordinem Wesen_ , Hank looks out the window at the felled wolfsangel and contemplates the existence of wesen hate-groups. It’s hard to believe anyone would have a problem with Monroe and Rosalee getting married, but Hank would be the first to admit he doesn’t know a lot about how wesen operate. He’d always figured they were basically humans with a bit weirder secrets than most, but in retrospect the case with the Anubis mummy should have tipped him off that they had a culture all their own.

After a few moments of thought his detective training kicks back in and Hank starts asking questions, trying to figure out exactly what they’re dealing with. What Rosalee has to say only confirms what he already knew- that the burning wolfsangel is the work of a hate group. That there’s sympathy for the group’s position within the Wesen Counsel comes as no surprise to Hank, though it does leave them with little recourse in the way of official action. As much as it rankles, there’s nothing they can do just yet.

Monroe refuses to leave his home, and they all know that writing up a police report isn’t going to stop a wesen dispute, so after hearing that Nick and Juliette are going to do their thing Hank heads home. He figures they don’t need him there, and he doesn’t want to get anywhere near the fallout of another hexebiest potion. Once Nick’s grimm-vision is restored, things go back to something approaching normal. The next few weeks are quiet, at least on the wesenrein front. In the meantime some Christmas hijinks and a string of random and brutal murders keep them pretty busy, and Hank’s nights are far from peaceful.

The dreams are different from the nightmares he had about wildermann and wolf-men before Nick brought him up to speed on the world around them. Stories his grandmother told him of lynchings and marches feature prominently. The wesenrein is in his thoughts frequently during the day too, in the rare moments when they aren’t working a case, wesen or otherwise.

They know the wesenrein was part of the Spanish Inquisition, using it as a cover to investigate, kidnap, and execute anyone who committed the “crime” of marrying outside their bloodline. Hank wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been part of the Gestapo or the KKK too, hate groups working within hate groups. It would be the perfect breeding ground for that fixation with blood purity, and the perfect cover.

Hank knows there are black wesen. Wesen-hood isn’t something that’s restricted by race; Zuri and Jared, and the boxer, Clay Pittman, and his mother are proof of that. Hank wonders if skin color is a source of discrimination between wesen, if a black blutbad is seen as less than a white windego, or if wesen draw their lines primarily along species – that may not be the right word, but he can’t call it race- instead. Most of the wesen he and Nick run across in homicide investigations are predatory, but he knows there are (mostly) harmless ones, the kind that woge into prey animals like sheep or mice, and he remembers how the Blutbaden-Bauerschwein feud blew up, literally. So maybe it matters less to them whether a wesen is black or white, and more whether they’re a hunter or the hunted.

Hank thinks of Zuri Ellis, trying to support herself and her brother on her own with her mother dead and her father in jail; Clay Pittman playing a sport he hates to make his single mother proud. Hank grew up without a father himself, not in the projects but close enough, and plenty of the people he grew up with and went to school with might have been Zuri or Clay, minus the wesen part. Hell, with the wesen part, in Jarold’s case, but that’s a separate issue.

Hank wonders with a sick twist in his stomach if there are any black wesen in the wesenrein, any people out there who care enough about keeping wesen blood pure that they’re willing to recreate the burning crosses and lynchings that terrified their parents and grandparents. It’s a thought he comes back to several times over the following days, especially after the dead fox turns up at the spice shop. When Monroe goes missing- well, he doesn’t have much time to spare to ponder it at that point. But after he sees the place where they hold the tribunal, the red and black banners with what looks enough like a swastika that it’s impossible not to think of Nazi Germany, Hank wonders if there are any Jewish wesen in the wesenrein.

When the raid is over and they’ve got the surviving wesenrein members booked and the bodies of the rest recovered, it’s a sea of pale faces and Anglo and German names, and Hank finds himself breathing a sigh of relief. He knows this isn’t all of them –it’s just the local chapter of a national or international organization, the same way different cities have their own branches of the KKK- but it’s good to see that here, at least, the wesen whose grandparents experienced terror and oppression for their race or religion have no interest in reproducing those horrors.

In his press conference the captain calls the wesenrein a “violent and racist group,” a “cult of hatred,” which is accurate as far as Hank’s concerned. Saying it’s been destroyed is probably overly optimistic, but it’s been stamped out in Portland at least, and that’s something. They did good work that night, even Wu, who just learned the truth, and Juliette, who’s not a cop, a wesen, or a Grimm. Not that any of them were really acting as cops when they went out there.

After the last reporter has left the precinct, Hank closes his case files with a feeling of tired satisfaction. This case has been rough on him –though not nearly as rough as it’s been on Monroe and Rosalee, he’s sure- and Hank’s glad to have it behind him. He rises from his desk, and across from him Nick does the same. Wu joins them at the door, and they pick up the captain on their way out. Monroe and Rosalee have invited the lot of them over to their place for drinks, and it strikes Hank that it’ll be the same as the night the wolfsangel was first burned on Monroe’s lawn, just with a few more people around. It seems like a fitting way to wrap things up.

At the house Nick pulls Hank aside to remind him that they’ve still got one thing left to do. Fortunately it’s a responsibility they’re both happy to take on. Their friends deserve a honeymoon, and nothing’s going to interrupt them this time. He and Nick personally escort Monroe and Rosalee to their terminal at the airport, and Nick makes a show of asking the security officer on duty there to see to it that they get to their plane without any trouble. Monroe tries to say that they can find the gate on their own, thank you very much, but Rosalee silences him with a kiss. Nick and Hank take their leave while he’s distracted.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Nick comments on the drive back. He doesn’t say what “it” is, and he doesn’t have to. Hank’s sure Nick gets the same relieved, almost giddy feeling in his chest when he sees the couple together and knows that all that pain, all that hatred they faced because of their love, has only brought them closer together.

“Yeah,” Hank says. “It feels good.”

The limo drops him off at his apartment afterwards, and as he steps into the empty living room Hank contemplates his plans for the next day, which he and Nick both have off, captain’s orders. He briefly considers calling Zuri and asking her out to lunch –it seems seeing Monroe and Rosalee off has put him in a romantic mood- but she told him before that she didn’t want to pursue anything with him, and Hank doesn’t want to push.

He thinks suddenly of the stories his grandmother used to tell him about how she and his grandfather met, which the old man would pretend to complain about even while he was blushing. Hank thinks of the other stories too, the ones that have been in his dreams for too many nights lately. Now that the case is closed, it won’t hurt for him to talk about it. He can’t tell her the full truth, of course, but what he can tell her is sure to make her proud. Besides, he’s well overdue for a visit.

His plans for the next day decided, Hank grabs a bite to eat and a quick shower before falling into bed. As exhausting and stressful as the past few days have been, he’s asleep before his head hits the pillow. It’s the first night in a while that his dreams are free from cross-like structures wreathed in flames.


End file.
